When the taxman calls, artist Teresa Cito doesn't wince. She knows the state isn't after a single peso. The taxman wants a donation of her artwork.

An unusual program in Mexico allows painters, sculptors and other artists to donate part of their annual production of artwork to the state in lieu of paying taxes. The program, begun in 1957, has helped the government amass a huge collection of contemporary art. It's also left artists such as Cito content, free from worry about tax forms and audits.

"I don't even have an accountant," Cito said.

The program is so simple she doesn't need one. If she sells up to five pieces in one calendar year, she donates one of equal value to the state. If she sells six to eight pieces, she donates two. The sliding scale continues until an artist gives a maximum of six pieces.

Cito, who does colorful oil paintings as well as stark chalk drawings on paper, doesn't slough off her lesser work to the state. She knows it will be exhibited, perhaps in a government ministry or museum, or a Mexican embassy abroad.

"My priority is to offer a nice piece," Cito said, praising the program known simply as Payment in Kind. "I admire it very, very, very much. The government says, 'Pay your taxes in artwork. Keep on painting.' "

Hundreds of artists take part, and it's hard to find one with even the faintest hesitation. Many hail the program as unique in the world.

"I think it's fantastic," said Naomi Siegmann, a sculptor born in New York who's lived in Mexico for five decades. Her tax payments are on display "in offices all over the country," government offices as well as public buildings."

"Every big artist is in this program. I mean the top, top artists ," she said.

The program is thought to have had its genesis in a 1957 encounter between a tax official and David Alfaro Siqueiros, a muralist and painter of social realism, who related how an artist friend faced jail time for not paying taxes.

"Siqueiros vehemently argued that a painter knows nothing about accounting or complications of tax law. The only thing we have, he said, are pictures, and if you like, we can pay our obligations to the government with the delivery of some paintings," the tax official, Hugo Margain, later wrote. "It doesn't seem like a bad idea, I told him."